


her fight and fury is fiery

by overcomewithlongingfora_girl



Series: girls, girls, girls! [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Avatar WLW Week 2020, Burns, But You Could Read It In There If You Wanted???, F/F, Feelings, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Love, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Poor Azula :(, Protectiveness, Scars, The Girls Are Just Friends Here But They LOVE Each Other, no explicit romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:54:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26238184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overcomewithlongingfora_girl/pseuds/overcomewithlongingfora_girl
Summary: Ty Lee is always covered in bruises from all the tumbling she does.Mai isn’t allowed so much as a scratch.As for Azula, well – neither of them have ever gotten close enough to see.
Relationships: Azula & Mai (Avatar), Azula & Ty Lee (Avatar), Mai & Ty Lee (Avatar)
Series: girls, girls, girls! [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1904494
Comments: 19
Kudos: 126





	her fight and fury is fiery

**Author's Note:**

> tw for implied/referenced child abuse!
> 
> Inspired by the Avatar WLW week 2020 prompt "scars"

Ty Lee is always covered in bruises from all the tumbling she does. Sure, she’s graceful and talented and quick on her feet, but even with the instincts of a cat, there are times when things go wrong. She picks herself back up smiling every time, and every greenish yellow bump is a testament to her persistence.

Mai, on the other hand, isn’t allowed so much as a scratch. Her parents would stop her training if they thought she was practicing with someone who might mar her perfect skin, so she learns to fight from a distance, to hurl knives so far and fast some firebenders even have trouble keeping up with her. No one ever gets close enough to touch, far less leave a mark.

As for Azula, well – neither of them have ever gotten close enough to see. Mai and Ty Lee assume. They assume. Of course they assume! Azula is the crown princess! With Zuko banished off to who knows where, she’s next in line for the throne. No one is _allowed_ to touch her. Not even Mai and Ty Lee. That’s why Azula jerks back from every touch.

Being on the road together is the first time Mai and Ty Lee are confronted with all that they don’t know. First, they’re tasked with hunting down the Avatar, and it turns out this mythical spirit is just a twelve-year-old kid. A kid traveling with a horde of other kids, all of whom look scared every time the girls find them. In fact, in the Earth Kingdom, a lot of people look scared of them. At the very least, they look angry when they see the girls’ Fire Nation reds.

Ty Lee murmurs questions to Mai about it, and Mai pretends she knows the answers, and neither of them say a word to Azula about the new thoughts spinning through their heads. The princess seems fine, after all. Utterly herself – ruthless, relentless, and rigid in her beliefs. Struggling Earth Kingdom common folk aren’t nearly enough to change her convictions. She barely seems to see them, anyway. She’s still the princess, the future Fire Lady, and she’s so committed to her own superiority that she has a separate tent from even Mai and Ty Lee.

Until, that is, those damn Kyoshi warriors turn her own flames against her and trick her into setting all their supplies ablaze.

Mai can see it happening as it happens, just before it happens, and she tries to shout a warning, but it’s no use. Azula won’t listen to her. To heed a call from Mai would be weakness, would be taking orders from someone lower than her. Azula lets loose with her trademark blue flames and Mai and Ty Lee watch in silent dismay as they’ve brought with them goes up in smoke.

It’s Ty Lee that brings it up, bouncing nervously from foot to foot as a smirking Azula watches the Kyoshi warriors get carted away. “Sooo Azula, don’tcha think we should go with them?”

Azula laughs derisively. “Of course not. We’re headed to Ba Sing Se. They’re headed to prison.”

“Yeah, but we don’t really have any supplies anymore…”

Eyebrows furrowing, Azula glances around the smoking wreckage of the camp. There’s an infinitesimal widening of her eyes, as if it’s the first time she’s processing it, and Mai and Ty Lee exchange a lightning quick look. It’s scary, when Azula does this. Processing things just a few minutes too late, as if her own capacity for destruction escapes her notice half the time.

“We’re only a day out from Ba Sing Se.” Azula waves a dismissive hand. “We’ll be fine.”

“It does get cold here at night.” Mai says it like an offhand statement, knowing that any kind of inflection could read as a criticism.

Rolling her eyes, Azula waves an impatient hand at the smoldering campsite. “Go through the warriors’ things. I’m sure they have spare tents.”

After forty-five minutes of thorough searching, they have their answer. The warriors have plenty of bedrolls, but they must sleep outside, because there’s not a single tent to be found. The news makes Azula snarl.

“Fine.” She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “One night outside won’t kill us.”

“Ooh, yay!” Ty Lee claps her hands together. “We can see the stars!”

Rolling her eyes, Azula turns back to Mai. “Find anything else useful in those packs?”

Mai shrugs. “Spare uniforms and some street clothes.”

Eyes lighting up in a familiar, scheming way, Azula nods a few times as she turns that over in her head. “Hang onto the uniforms,” she tells Mai decisively. “Those could come in useful.”

Nodding, Mai starts to set aside three of the sets of clothes and then pauses, glancing Azula up and down evaluatively. “Your clothes are burned.”

“So?”

“You could change.”

An expression that Ty Lee and Mai don’t recognize comes over Azula’s face. It’s a flaring of the nostrils, a tightening of the shoulders, a widening of the eyes. Before the girls can classify it, it’s gone. She’s rolling her eyes and waving a hand. “Fine. Let’s find a stream so I can get clean before I put on these old peasant rags.”

_

They don’t mean to see her. They really don’t. Ty Lee needs water to cook with and they assumed – another fucking _assumption –_ that Azula was done washing up. They forgot to consider the fact that she’s a firebender. That she was heating the water and waiting for it to cool and then washing, and then doing it again.

They walk up on her while her back is turned and it’s right there. Across her back and down her arms. The cooking pot falls out of Ty Lee’s hands and clatters across the rocks, damningly loud.

In a flash, Azula’s spinning around, eyes wild and furious, hands already sparking with blue fire. “Get away!” she howls, face transformed by something that Mai and Ty Lee both finally recognize as fear. “Get _away!”_

_

It’s ages before Azula returns to the campsite. The first hour, Mai and Ty Lee are pretty quiet. Shaken.

Before too long though, Ty Lee has questions.

She creeps up beside Mai so quietly it’s as if she’s afraid of waking someone up. “Mai?”

“Yeah?”

Mai can’t force her usual indifference. She doesn’t sound aloof, she just sounds stunned.

“What…what _was_ that?”

“The marks?” Mai’s flipping one of her knives over and over in her fingers, daydreaming about throwing them. The figure she hurls them at is hazy, indistinct. There’s a face she knows, but she can’t think it. “They’re scars, Ty Lee.”

“Well, well, I know that,” Ty Lee gulps. “But…but…”

“They’re burns. Someone burned her. A lot, I guess.”

“Like, like training?” Ty Lee’s voice sounds strained, like she’s trying hard to understand, trying hard to make it make sense. “Or like an accident?”

“Maybe.” Mai shrugs. They can both tell that Mai doesn’t believe that.

“They’re…they’re old, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. At least a couple years. Some of them.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh.”

There’s nothing else to say, but there’s something in the air. A pressure, a hanging weight that won’t leave. Nothing for them to do, then, but wait for Azula to return.

_

When she strides into camp both girls jump to their feet and then stand their awkwardly, hanging in that tension before Azula releases them with an irritated sigh. “Well?” she demands, hand on her hip and one perfectly coiffed eyebrow lifted. “Is dinner ready?”

“No.” Ty Lee sounds hesitant, hushed.

Huffing, Azula glares at her. “What’s wrong with you?” she’s scornful, but Mai and Ty Lee know what she’s doing. She’s asking them to be normal, to ignore it, to pretend nothing has happened and she’s still the perfect princess they’ve always known.

Mai, for one, is ready to comply, ready to ignore the sick confusion and the impotent rage that rises in her when she thinks about the raised red welts on her friend’s back. “Sorry.” She forces an eye roll. “We’ll get dinner-”

“Are you okay?”

Ty Lee’s gray eyes are huge and worried and though she doubtless understood Azula’s message, she refuses to hear it. “Azula.” Her voice is sorrowful. “Are you okay?”

Blinking, Azula stares at her for a moment, mouth dropping open. “W-what are you talking about?” Her voice sounds way too harsh, forced. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Now that Ty Lee has forced the conversation, Mai isn’t going to let her handle this alone. She can’t. She draws in a deep breath. “Azula, the…the marks on your back…”

“What marks?”

“Azula you’re…you’re covered in burns.” Ty Lee all but whispers it. “O-old ones, too. Who did that to you? How old were you?”

Ty Lee is so deep in dangerous territory that she probably couldn’t pull back even if she wanted to. She just hopes that Azula can see she doesn’t mean any harm. That this information won’t be used to hurt her. That Ty Lee just wants to – just wants to make it make sense – just wants to understand how someone could do that to a kid. How someone could do that to her friend.

“I’m a firebender, Ty Lee.” Azula flicks her hair over her shoulder. “ _Obviously_ I’ve been trained.”

“Firebenders don’t train like that.” It’s a whisper from Mai, but Azula’s head still snaps up. “My-my cousin’s a firebender, they don’t…they don’t burn each other like that.”

“I’m a princess, Mai. I’m a _prodigy._ I’m not your stupid cousin. No one’s going to go easy on me. I’m too good for that.”

Usually, Mai doesn’t snap this easy, but she’s scared and confused and upset. “So what?” she bites, glaring. “You’re _so good_ that someone has to, has to attack and burn you for you to learn?”

“Maybe!” Azula’s all too ready to rise to her anger, glaring right back with a ferocity that makes Ty Lee wince. “Maybe that’s what it took for me to learn!”

“How the _fuck_ does that help you learn?!”

“I don’t make any mistakes, do I? _Do I?_ I’m not like Zuko, I’m better, I don’t make mistakes because I learned early and I learned fast and now I’m the best. I’m the best, I’m the best there is, and he made me this way so don’t _tell me it didn’t help me learn!”_

She’s shaking. Azula’s shaking, her eyes are wild, her fists are on fire, and she’s shaking. Mai and Ty Lee are staring at her, mute, terrified, but not…not scared of her.

“Azula.” Ty Lee’s voice is soft, mournful. “Oh, Azula.”

“What?” The shaking is getting worse. If it weren’t Azula, perfectly poised, completely controlled _Azula,_ they might even call it trembling. The flames in her hands have gone out. “What?”

Slowly, carefully, hands held out empty in front of her, Mai steps forward. Eyeing her warily, Azula lets her approach, but Mai has a sense that at any moment the firebender could bolt, or turn, or ignite her hands –

Ty Lee seems to have none of those concerns. She flings herself forward, wraps her arms tight around Azula’s middle. Staggering backwards with the force of Ty Lee’s hug, Azula’s face shifts from shocked to angry to confused to-to-to-

Something else. Mai doesn’t see it because she’s next to Azula now too, carefully wrapping her arms around the pair. Under their arms, Azula is stiff, holding her hands out to her sides, refusing to touch them, but when Mai and Ty Lee finally pull away, Azula leans with them, just a little, as if she’s still seeking their warmth.

Then she comes back to herself. “Well.” She sniffs. “I don’t know what the hell _that_ was, but I’m hungry.”

“I’ll make dinner,” Ty Lee agrees easily, “if you’ll make a fire.”

She does. And the three of them sit together on the ground and eat dinner and pretend that nothing happened. Ty Lee and Mai keep thinking about it, though. Keep thinking about the marks they saw and what it made them feel and how it felt to hold Azula, who was still shaking finely, in their arms. Did that hug fix something? Heal it over?

Or did it only fan the flames of the doubt that was growing in their minds?

Neither girl has an answer yet. There are so _few_ answers, nowadays, and they’re just three teenage girls. A princess and two noblewomen. A firebender and a chi blocker and a knife thrower. Three warriors. Three huntresses. Three teenage girls, who, without discussing it, line their sleeping bags up next to each other beside the fire.

Azula’s a firebender. She radiates heat like a furnace. That’s why Mai and Ty Lee sleep so close to her that night – it’s only an effort to keep away the cold. That’s what they tell her, and sullenly she nods, and no one says anything the next morning, when they all wake so close together it’s hard to tell where one girl ends and the next begins.

**Author's Note:**

> I know this wasn't explicitly romantic but it just *happened* this way and I hc all three girls as queer in some way so let's just pretend it counts. I wanted something soft for Azula because as much as she's done wrong she's fourteen and she deserves it!!
> 
> Please let me know what you think in the comments, or head on over to my blog on tumblr at overcomewithlongingfora-girl !


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